It seems to me that Paul Krugman has turned almost exclusively to rousing a low quality Democratic/social-democratic rabble, and hence will very rarely acknowledge any serious shortcomings of cows sacred to that rabble. The transformation seems to have started around the time he became a regular at the NYT; that was very apparent to me when Harika Barlett and I worked through all of his NYT columns 1997-2006[3]. The omissions become deafening (and hence the title of our article, “Left Out”).

Tyler Cowen makes a remarkable contrast. He practices temperance almost to the point of intemperance. In this respect (and others) he is in the company of John Stuart Mill.

A question: Who is the closest thing, temperance-wise, to a Tyler Cowen on the left/Democrat side of discourse today?

In the real world, setting a floor under the price of labor creates winners and losers. Some workers will get a $1.75 raise. Great. But others—typically the least educated and skilled—will be priced out of the job market and their pay won’t rise to $9. It will be zero.

University of California at Irvine economist David Neumark has looked at more than 100 major academic studies on the minimum wage, and he says the White House claim of de minimis job losses “grossly misstates the weight of the evidence.” About 85% of the studies “find a negative employment effect on low-skilled workers.”